Virtual PAs, Virtual Assistants and Virtual Telecoms infrastructures are changing the way small businesses work. What's so special about Going Mobile? Here's 5.

Going Mobile (v) (inf.): To untether a business from traditional locations and staffing requirements, usually via Virtual Telecoms & Virtual Office packages, in conjunction with other outsourcing solutions that cut costs, hardware and overheads.

1.  Cost

Telecoms technicians, infrastructure and maintenance is not cheap. Neither are switchboards, staff, staff training days and HR.

Virtual Telecoms spirits these away for a fixed low monthly or annual fee.

Hardware is built to fail, favouring replacement over continuity. Virtual Telecoms remove that consumer crutch and, like all web based applications, focus on staying constantly updated. 

Just as the big Telco firms price each other out and squabble over their piece of the broadband and mobile package pie whilst often falling short in terms of customer care and hardware problems, so too the Telco and phone system providers for SMEs often leave their customers stranded when things go wrong, leaving you to parachute in a freelance technician. 

No office, no bills, no staff. Cheap as houses (or Virtual houses: London residential and office prices are unsurprisingly extortionate, which is why it makes rather alot of sense for businesses to sidestep our absurd property bubble and get a London virtual office).

2. Security

The key is in the name: Virtual Telecoms; that means you never have to fix a dodgy router, worry about your USB sticks going missing, disentangle a mess of wires or handle catastrophic hardware failure. 

For example, disaster recovery facilities protect your call infrastructure in all circumstances. Cloud based storage is a huge business and, as it evolves, will continue to generate ever more sophisticated methods of protecting consumer and business information, saving your data from flash floods, fires and theft, as well as the more prosaic forms of hardware failure.

The National Cyber Security Programme, backed up by £860 million of Government investment over 5 years to 2016 won't hurt. 

3. Technology & The Middle Man

Business is heading away from face to face services: outsourcing will become the cornerstone of the service industry as an emerging rental and subscription-based economy  - think accommodation, entertainment, technology - inherit the world from a saving economy.

The digital industries have enabled potentially any individual to create some product or other that can flourish, but the hallmark of the digital industries is their niche usefulness:

most all apps function essentially as a means of facilitation, of being the middle man.

Digital middle man-ing is on the rise and it's supported by the lifestyle of flexibility, mobility and spontaneity, which is what Virtual Telecoms and Offices are all about for those on the move operating in multiple territories.

4. Data

Austerity has increased the divisions between monied and non-monied, but quantitive easing means that there is liquidity around, it’s just around for those brought up or brought into a system where access to it through information, nouse or connectivity is increased. 

Financial services in general hoover up much of that floating cash, but the rest is being funnelled into late capitalism's latest hydra: Fintech; an industry that trebled investment last year to $12bn.

Accenture defines fintech businesses as companies that offer technology for banking and corporate finance, capital markets, financial data analytics, payments and personal financial management.

Information saturation, data sharing and compilation across all sectors and territories is only going to increase. More digitised, global and silicony means businesses will be able to decentre themselves as their audience extends into markets overseas. Which brings us nicely to...

5. Going Global

Mobile telecommunication has always been about mobility and connectivity. Mass movements - of people, goods & information - is only going to snowball as emerging markets harness and buy into the bourgeois trappings of their western neighbours, evolving and outstripping innovation in key areas of technology and infrastructure. 

The Virtual and Outsourcing industries have enfranchised those cut off from the financial centres of the world... 

... empowering individuals with bright ideas to transform their business models into reality, wherever they are.

With broadband providers due to descend on even the deepest backwaters of the world, social reach, market reach and product applicability will spiral into towns, villages and coffee shops the world over.

Which will mean a lot more globally untethered, mobile businesses relieving themselves from the back office essentials through business process outsourcing.

Learn more about our Virtual Office and Telecoms and Virtual PA solutions, or alternatively, give us a call on +44(0)207 889 3000 to learn more about Going Mobile.